[License-review] License review

[Carlo Piana]

Hi, 

speaking in my personal capacity here. 

The license is indeed poorly drafted, I am afraid. Not that MIT is itself a masterpiece of legal language, but at least it's a popular license. 

EG, it is not clear if the list of conditions stops at the inclusion of copyright notice etc. Already in MIT this is not very clear, since the liability disclaimer is not written as a condition, but at least one can arguably construe it as such. 

But you have added an extra paragraph that seems to remove any doubts. So, in case the liability limitation is not valid (for instance, it would not be valid under Italian law) it does not even work as a condition (the copyright title is revoked since you violated the condition by claiming that the author be liable, therefore you are not coming with clean hands since you violated the author's copyright in the first place and therefore even damages are subject to a higher bar) . 

I am not even sure that paragraph on "for any complaints" belongs in license conditions. 

The most notable addition to MIT is a very simple copyleft condition, which risks to be quite overarching and troublesome, since there is no indication that its copyleft extends only to anything that it is derivative under copyright title. It is my understanding that copyleft that goes beyond copyright and establishes overreaching conditions on non-derivative be contrary to #9 of OSD. You should at least clarify this, IMHO. 

Depending on the meaning of the copyleft condition and technical consideration, also, it might or might not be against #6. 

My tentative opinion is that this license should be rejected on the above grounds. 

All the best 

Carlo 

> Da: "Setup Tooling Legal Team" <legal at burningpho3nix.xyz>
> A: "license-review at lists.opensource.org" <license-review at lists.opensource.org>
> Inviato: Mercoledì, 15 maggio 2024 14:39:52
> Oggetto: [License-review] License review

> Greetings everyone,

> I'd like to get a new license approve,
> this license is complying with the OSD.
> The project [ https://gitlab.com/setup-tooling-project/setup-tool | Setup Tool ]
> is planning to adopt this license as soon as it's approved.
> The person maintaining this license is myself.
> I have not send it to review by the FSF or such yet.
> The license attached is called "Setup Tooling License 1.3".
> This license is not exactly filling a big gap, it is more about matching it to
> the projects needs.
> As it is derived from the MIT license it is very similar to that,
> the difference made is a restriction to use or better said no use in
> closed-source software.
> The license was not drafted by a lawyer.

> Best regards,
> Eddi-Jay Ohlms
> BurningPho3nix, Maintainer and Project Lead Setup Tooling Project
> _______________________________________________
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